Brightly colored chrysanthemum and roses, citrus fruit and purple kale those are some of the items Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students are using to decorate the Cal Poly Universities’ float as the final days before the Rose Parade wind down.

Students from the two universities along with volunteers are giving life to the universities’ entry in Monday’s Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade.

“We took it back to our younger age,” said Jon de Leon, a fifth-year student, majoring in mechanical engineering at Cal Poly Pomona who lives in Walnut but who calls Long Beach his hometown.

The Cal Poly Universities float, “Dreams Take Flight” depicts three young animals — Paula the Koala, Ollie the Otter and Rusty the Red Panda — as they take to the sky aboard handcrafted cardboard airplanes. The float, which is the 70th the universities have entered, represents the creativity of children and youth.

The float depicts “three animals you would not see together in nature,” said Hurtado, a second-year master’s of business administration student from Salinas who is living in Pomona.

Students typically incorporate animation in their float and this year is no different. The animals’ planes will move as if they were in flight as will a series of paper planes, said de Leon.

Brent Hollinger, a resident of Upland who is a fourth-year student majoring in kinesiology, is Cal Poly Pomona’s decorations chairman. With the help of hundreds of volunteers the float has been moving along on schedule.

Students and volunteers have been using an assortment of flowers and other natural materials to give color to the float. For example, coffee grounds and almond shells give the otter its color, Hollinger said.

Gorilla hair, a material that resembles redwood bark, gives the red panda its fur effect. The purple kale will be part of the back part of the creation and yellow button mums and orange slices cover one of the planes.

About 300 pounds of dried, blended banana chips produced the off-white color in a series of ribbons connected to the planes, Hollinger said.

For the seventh year, the Cal Poly Universities float will be certified California Grown. That’s the same number of years the parade certification program has existed, said Kasey Cronquist, chief executive officer of the California Cut Flower Commission.

Other entries have been and will be recognized at a certification ceremony Sunday but none have consistently received the recognition like the Cal Poly Universities, he said.

To be certified entries must have more than 85 percent of cut flowers and green from Calfornia. The universities have 97 percent this year, said Hollinger.